UK

 

As Trade Unionists we must Demand Starmer Restore the Whip to Diane Abbott

24th May 2024Leave a Commenton As Trade Unionists we must Demand Starmer Restore the Whip to Diane Abbott

“With the General Election looming, we must demand Keir Starmer restores the whip!”

By Logan Willians

Earlier this year, we saw the racist hatred faced by Diane Abbott – needless to say a bastion of the Labour Left and titan within the broader labour and social movements for decades– put under the national spotlight when it came out that the £10 million Tory party donor Frank Hester had said Diane Abbott on tv made him “just want to hate all black women because she’s there” and would later go onto state that he thinks “she should be shot”. Hester’s comments should not be dismissed as the crack pot ideas of one rogue Tory donor but, instead reflect a reactionary shift in the politics of both the establishment and British society which see’s the politics expressed by Diane as a threat that must be targeted as can be seen in Amnesty’s previous report into political targeting which placed Diane as the most targeted politician in Britain.

These racist and misogynistic attacks on Diane are not just a direct attack on Diane and the politics she stands for, they are part of a broader shift to the extreme right of British politics across both the establishment and, society more broadly. This can be seen in Lee Anderson, the former Conservative Party Deputy Chair’s claim that Islamists are ‘in control of London’ or former Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s claim that “Islamists” are “in charge” of Britain.

It is in recognition of this extreme right-wing offensive that two of the largest trade unions in Britain namely, the University College Union and the National Education Union, quickly expressed their total solidarity with Diane through various means. The UCU national executive rightfully recognised that not only had the “Tories refused to return donations from someone who spoke in deeply hateful, racist and misogynistic terms… but our Prime Minster refused to call it out and tried to suggest that a feeble apology was enough and should be accepted”. They would go on to “condemn the blatant double standards being applied to Diane Abbott by politicians on all sides of the house” as well as the “actions of this cruel and divisive government in whipping up racial and misogynistic tensions year after year for their own gain”.

They also explicitly called for the Parliamentary Labour Party whip to be restored to Diane, joining growing calls from across society and the Labour Party in support of Diane at that point, including the likes of Ed Balls, Harriet Harman and John McTiernan.

The National Education Union’s annual conference passed an Urgent Motion on the impact of racist language and violence on schools and communities. It was within this motion that the NEU recognised both the “2022 internal Labour Party Forde report which identified ‘overt and underlying racism and sexism’ towards Abbott and other Black MPs” within the Labour Party hierarchy and that the comments made by Hester towards Britain’s longest serving Black MP “normalises violence against women” and as such the Union voted overwhelmingly to offer its fully solidarity to Diane Abbott as well as strengthening its anti-fascist and anti-racist work. Following this debate NEU General Secretary Daniel Kebede would state the union “wants Diane Abbott and other women in public life to be able to do their jobs free from intimidation and threats”. He continued by stating that “comments and ideas which espouse violent, hateful rhetoric and encourage violence have no place in national public debate” as it will lead to serious consequences for the union’s members in education settings across the country.

The actions undertaken by both these Unions, in standing up and demanding justice for Diane Abbott – which must include the Parliamentary Labour Party whip being restored -reflects an understanding that the labour movement cannot stand idly by whilst the politics Diane has trailblazed within the British political sphere is tarnished and targeted by politicians and commentators who are not fit to tie the laces of Diane Abbott.  Following on from the campaigning work of the Voice newspaper, Labour Left groups and others the actions of UCU and NEU activists helped to lay down a gauntlet of action which the rest of the movement has been taking up more and more and has become urgent with the General Election being called. To give just two examples, the General Secretaries of four affiliated unions recently wrote to Keir Starmer demanding that the whip be restored, and over 15,000 people have now signed the petition on the same lines initiated by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas and the Labour Assembly Against Austerity.

We must continue to build as broad a movement as possible in solidarity with the politics best represented in Diane Abbott’s lifetime of work; solidarity, socialism and, the core labour movement ideal that unity is strength. And with the General Election looming, we must demand Keir Starmer restores the whip!

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• Over 15,000 activists have signed a petition to Keir Starmer calling on him to restore the whip to Diane Abbott. Add your name here.
• The General Secretaries of four affiliated trade unions – ASLEF, CWU, FBU and TSSA – recently wrote to Keir Starmer calling for the whip to be restored to Diane Abbott. You can read it in full here.

SURGE IN SUPPORT FOR WHIP TO BE RESTORED TO DIANE ABBOTT

A GRASSROOTS PETITION CALLING ON KEIR STARMER TO RESTORE THE PARLIAMENTARY LABOUR PARTY WHIP TO DIANE ABBOTT HAS REACHED THE LANDMARK OF 15,000 SIGNATURES, WITH OVER 3,000 PEOPLE SIGNING IN LESS THAN A DAY.

Marking the petition reaching this level of support Labour member of the House of Lords Lord John Hendy KC, said, “The idea that Diane Abbott should not be permitted to stand as a Labour Party candidate in the forthcoming general election is unthinkable. It would be the ultimate insult on top of the catalogue of vile abuse she suffered at the hands of the Party recorded by Martin Forde KC in his Report. It must not happen.”

Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP issued similar comments, saying, “I am appealing to Keir Starmer to restore the whip to Diane and let her stand as a Labour candidate. As the first Black woman MP and with her campaigning record on behalf of her community and the Labour Party, she is an iconic figure and especially inspiring to young Black women. I am just asking for her to be created fairly.”

Welcoming the surge in support for the campaign, BFAWU General Secretary Sarah Woolley said, “Diane Abbott has stood with trade unions for decades – and now workers across our trade unions are standing with Diane, a trailblazer who deserves our full solidarity. The amazing support for this petition shows what support she has out there – Labour should do the right thing and restore the whip without delay.”

The co-convenor of Stand up to Racism, Sabby Dhalu said, “Labour voters do not want a Parliamentary Labour Party that welcomes Natalie Elphicke but excludes Diane Abbott. As we enter a general election campaign Labour cannot afford to alienate Black voters. Polls show 80% of Black voters won’t vote Labour if Diane Abbott is not a Labour candidate. Labour must restore the whip to Diane Abbott.”

A similar position was expressed by Labour member of the House of Lords Shami Chakrabarti in comments to the Independent yesterday, when she said:“If the tent is big enough for her [Natalie Elphicke], I feel sure that Britain’s first Black woman MP, who has sustained more racist and misogynist abuse than anyone, will have her whip restored urgently.”

Giving a local perspective on the growing support for Diane, former Branch Labour Party and Hackney Local Campaigns Forum Secretary, Pat Corrigan, said: “Diane Abbott was democratically reselected by an overwhelming majority of Hackney North branches and affiliates. Keir Starmer should allow Diane to stand as our candidate. She is the members’ choice.”

All Hackney North and Stoke Newington Labour Party branches had voted overwhelmingly for Diane to be their candidate. She won re-election on eight occasions since she first stood for office since becoming the first Black woman MPs in British history in 1987. She opposed the Iraq War, challenged racist policing in Hackney and beyond and supports the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state.  She as a leading opponent of the immigration Act 2014, which led directly to the Windrush scandal and her speech on civil liberties, in the debate on the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008, won the Spectator magazine’s “Parliamentary Speech of the Year” award, and further recognition at the 2008 Human Rights awards.

Diane was the first Black woman to be elected to any national legislature in Western Europe, the first Black person to be included in Labour’s shadow cabinet as Shadow Home Secretary and is the longest serving Black Member of Parliament. Diane has faced levels of racism and misogyny that have shocked many across Britain. She commands respect internationally. while her commitment to be an effective voice in Parliament for Hackney residents remains unbreakable. She represents the best of Labour Party and movement values.

 She has helped transform the constituency into one of Labour’s safest seats, recording over 70% of the vote in 2019. Keir Starmer himself recognised her repeatedly as a “trailblazer”. Diane apologised swiftly and unreservedly for causing any offence after publication of a letter in the Observer last April. For 13 months she has awaited the outcome of a supposedly independent disciplinary process.

Many see a clear factional double standard in the treatment of Diane Abbott. Figures on the right of the Party have been treated far more leniently for more serious offences. Neil Coyle MP had the whip restored after initially being suspended for drunken abuse and making racist comments to a journalist. He then claimed the cost of an anti-racism course he attended on parliamentary expenses.  The MP had also reportedly previously had a complaint of sexual harassment upheld against him over an incident at a past Labour Conference.

Barking and Dagenham Council Leader Darren Rodwell remains a Labour prospective parliamentary candidate, despite ‘joking’ that he had “the worst tan possible for a black man”.

The petition is intended to show the high levels of support for Diane’s candidacy. It was initiated by the Labour Assembly Against Austerity and Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas. Commenting on behalf of the two organisations, Matt Willgress said: “Each day we see illustrations of the growing support there is for Diane to have the whip restored across the whole Labour Party and trade union movement – from Ed Balls, through to Polly Toynbee, through to John McDonnell and numerous trade union affiliates. It’s time to do the right thing and restore the whip.”

The petition has also been supported by numerous prominent figures on social media including Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Beth Winter, Richard Leonard, Richard Burgon, Apsana Begum, Jon Trickett, Nadia Whittome, Ian Lavery, ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan, TSSA General Secretary Maryam Eslamdoust, Grace Blakeley, Andrew Fisher, Alex Nunns, Simon Fletcher, James Scheider and Ben Sellers, plus the Labour Women Leading group. The General Secretaries of four affiliated trade unions – ASLEF, CWU, FBU and TSSA – recently wrote to Keir Starmer asking for the whip to be restored. You can read their letter in full here.

The petition can be signed here.

If Starmer wants Black voter support he should reinstate Diane Abbott

23rd May 20241 Commenton If Starmer wants Black voter support he should reinstate Diane Abbott

“To be clear, contempt and disrespect will be the only thing that many Black voters will feel regarding Starmer’s stance towards Black communities especially of late.”

By Richard Sudan, The Voice

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has now officially confirmed that the general election will be held on July 4th, just six weeks from now.

He announced the shock snap election outside 10 Downing Street, in the pouring rain, abruptly ending long held predictions that voters would head to the polls in autumn as many had speculated.

Scrutiny

In recent months Sunak has come under intense scrutiny over the government’s handling of numerous crises’ with many analysts suggesting that the Labour party would be heading for a landslide victory, with the Tories looking set for defeat.

Regardless, Prime Minister Sunak has now fired the starting gun on a race which was always going to be fought along bitter lines.

The Tories are increasingly viewed by observers as a party without a plan using a culture war to distract from the failure and havoc caused by 14 years of austerity.

Sir Keir Starmer has responded to the announcement by repeating his mantra that his party offers change and is ready to govern.

While this might appeal to some voters, the big question for many Black voters is just how loyal should Black communities remain to a Labour party which has recently shown near total contempt to a voter base that has traditionally  provided rock-solid support?

To be clear, contempt and disrespect will be the only thing that many Black voters will feel regarding Starmer’s stance towards Black communities especially of late.

After four years in charge of Labour Keir Starmer monumentally dropped the ball regarding plans for a long-awaited race equality act announced earlier this year.

Forced

Years in the making, the eventual unveiling of the plan seemed last minute and forced, offering little more than low-hanging fruit. Much of the plan is already enshrined in law and can be enforced under existing equalities legislation.

To rub salt into the wound, Black media,  including The Voice, were subsequently prevented from attending its launch, which was widely viewed as a disaster.

Another major issue for many in our communities is the treatment of Black MPs, in particular Diane Abbott.

Where Labour have failed to make sufficient progress in numerous critical areas, Abbott has remained a champion for many issues including the safeguarding of Black children, the challenges faced by Black boys and the underachievement of Black students in school.

In addition to this, Abbott has been a life-long anti-racism campaigner, and has opposed many of the wars which have made Labour unpopular over the years.

Abbott was also a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn who many feel is the closest Black people and other communities on the margin have had to a potential ally in Downing Street.

Reinstated

With the election now around the corner many will be watching to see if Abbott will be reinstated by Labour or if she will remain suspended – which many view as unjust – subjected to a never-ending investigation. 

Critics say the process is designed to prevent her from standing for Labour in the constituency she has represented since 1987. They are right.

It’s not just about Abbott, but her fate will provide a litmus test for many undecided voters as to whether they can trust Labour in government, or whether their support will be taken for granted.

Indeed, a poll conducted previously by The Voice showed 80% black voters could ditch Labour over the treatment of Abbott.

This was then followed by the Frank Hester scandal and the Tory Party donor’s comment that Abbott made him hate all black women.

The outrage which ensued sparked important conversations about the safety of black women in Britain.  Here was a chance to show some leadership and stand unequivocally with Abbott.

But the lack of solidarity towards Abbott from Starmer and Labour following the revelation of Hester’s words, and the sublime opportunism displayed by fundraising from her treatment, instead left a bitter taste in the mouth for many.

Culture war rhetoric

Many Black voters will also be alarmed at Starmer’s increasing willingness to cosy up to the Union Jack, embrace culture war rhetoric, while offering no bold reassurance that Labour will protect existing equality policies while pushing bold new ones.

The wider picture beyond this is that Black communities have been hit the hardest by a cost of living crisis which was exacerbated by the pandemic.

We need a prime minister who challenges inequality at the root particularly around, housing, employment, health and the criminal justice system.

Black voters will be unlikely to turn out for the Conservatives.  The party’s long track record of anti-Black racism is well-documented.

Disillusioned Black voters who abandon Labour won’t switch to the Tories, they’ll just stay home.

Disaster

This could prove a disaster for Labour, as the party might not be as far ahead in the polls as analysts suggest and the black vote in marginal seats could yet prove critical.

Starmer still needs the Black vote, whether he likes it or not.  Right now,  I think he’s on course to see it drastically slashed, but if he is serious about winning the election and serious about a second term he has 6 weeks to win it back.

The immediate reinstatement of Diane Abbott could be a start. A concrete commitment and plan to tackle entrenched inequality evidenced in the Black British Voices survey could be another step. 

Committing to ending the hierarchy of racism within Labour, shown by the Forde Report would be another.  Finally confronting the undeniable reality of institutional racism within the police is vital. 

Black voters are watching and will consider their options carefully before making their choice.  The stakes are too high for anything less.

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• This article was originally published by The Voice on May 23rd, 2024.
• Richard Sudan is a journalist for The Voice, Britain’s only Black national newspaper. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.
• You can sign a petition to Keir Starmer calling on him to restore the whip to Diane Abbott here.

UK

Constituents launch election campaign to ‘clean Parliament of climate deniers’

‘As a country, we face urgent threats on climate and nature. We need to make policies that follow the scientific evidence.’ 

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Yesterday

Left Foot Forward

MP Watch, a grassroots network of constituents that scrutinise MPs and aim to make them more accountable, has launched its election campaign. The campaign aims to let constituents know if they have an MP who denies climate change exists, so they are able to vote accordingly.

The campaigners list several MPs who are associated with denying the climate emergency exists, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Craig McKinlay, Esther McVey, Mark Jenkinson, Andrea Jenkins, Liz Truss, and Suella Braverman.

At the heart of the campaign launch is a film that lays bare the climate record of Steve Baker, Conservative MP of Wycombe, who the group describes as “climate denier number one.”

Baker was first elected as an MP in 2010 and was re-elected in 2019 with just a four thousand majority. An ardent Brexiteer, Baker was chair of the pro-Brexit group of MPs, the European Research Group (ERG), until he resigned when he was promoted to Brexit minister in 2017. He resigned from the post a year later, following the resignation of David Davis over concerns about the government’s strategy on Brexit.

The campaign film was put together by climate activist and filmmaker Guy Ducker. One of a series of clips relating to the MP’s history on climate change in the film refers to how in 2021 Baker became a trustee of the oil-funded climate sceptic group, Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). In September 2022, Baker left the climate denial group for a ministerial post in Liz Truss’s government, who made him minister of state for Northern Ireland, a post he still holds today.

Baker is a leading member of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, made up of backbench Conservative MPs, including former government ministers, who oppose many of the government’s Net Zero policies. The campaign film references a newspaper report about Baker sharing a paper, produced by GWPF, saying that the climate emergency does not exist.

Baker raised eyebrows this week when, during an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC, he said he would not cancel his holiday plans for his party’s general election campaign, despite admitting he will likely lose his seat.

For over two years, over 50 Wycombe constituents who form Steve Baker Watch, one of a number of groups within MP Watch targeting specific MPs, have asked Baker to change his climate position.

Rather than softening his position, the MP accused the environmental campaigners of “child abuse” and referred to them as “clowns,” which the film exposes.

Gemma Rogers, co-founder of the Steve Baker Watch, says she hopes the film will help seal a victory against Steve Baker.

“He treats us like mugs,” said the NHS worker. “He thinks he can head off to Westminster and quietly join the climate-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation and not explain it to constituents. Even though he was elected on the Conservative manifesto of 2019 which included sticking to the Paris Agreement.

“We think MPs should be held accountable for their actions. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We need him out at the next election and replaced by an MP that will truly represent us on climate,” Rogers added.

MP Watch campaign head Jessica Townsend described the aim of the campaign, as to “clean up parliament at the next election and to finally get rid of the pollution of climate misinformation.”.

“As a country, we face urgent threats on climate and nature. We need to make policies that follow the scientific evidence. Yet at this dangerous time, some in Westminster are playing politics on the issue. Frankly, it beggars’ belief.”

Image credit: YouTube screen grab

Benefit Fraud: The Right-Wing Lie that Refuses to Die

For many right-wing politicians and their media allies, ‘welfare cheats’ is a line that bears endless repetition

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Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Yesterday

LEFT FOOT FORWARD

News broke this week that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is investigating the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over its treatment of disabled people, specifically whether the department failed to make reasonable adjustments for people with learning disabilities or long-term mental health conditions when carrying out benefit health assessments.

“The DWP has been failing disabled people for decades now” and “full transparency and accountability is imperative,” said David Linden MP, the SNP’s Social Justice Spokesperson, in response to news of the investigation.

For years, successive Tory governments and the media ecosystems that support them, have demonised benefit claimants, presenting them as ‘scroungers,’ ‘frauds’ and ‘cheats.’ Who can forget the Sun’s ‘Beat the Cheat’ campaign in 2012, encouraging readers to be “patriotic” by reporting suspected benefit cheats to a benefit fraud hotline? In 2016, the then chancellor George Osborne refused to apologise for attempting to slice £4.4bn off benefits for people with disabilities, as he defended his controversial budget which led to the resignation of the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Today, very little has changed, except that the country is mired in a cost-of-living crisis that has fuelled the sharpest increase in absolute poverty in 30 years.

Time to raise benefits, not lower them, surely? Earlier this year, Labour was warned by an alliance of charities and think-tanks that poverty will soar if it comes to power and then fails to spend the money needed to reform welfare and help those struggling most with the cost of living. The report by IPPR and Changing Realities said that 4.4 million people in the UK are now in poverty, with the situation set to worsen without radical change.

But for many right-wing politicians and their media allies, ‘welfare cheats’ is a line that bears endless repetition.

In a bid to save £9bn in the next four years, the government is “scaling up the fight against those stealing from the taxpayer…” Mel Stride, work and pensions secretary, announced.

“With new legal powers, better data, and thousands of additional staff, our comprehensive plan ensures we have the necessary tools to tackle the scourge of benefit fraud,” Stride continued.

In a five-point plan for welfare reform delivered at the Iain Duncan-Smith founded Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a right-wing think tank and, as such, a comfort zone for Sunak, the PM promised to end ‘sicknote culture.’ He announced plans for new cuts to personal independence payment (PIP), claiming the increase in successful PIP claims was “driving up the cost of the disability benefits bill at an unsustainable rate.”

Taking aim at claimants with mental health issues, the PM spoke of requiring a “more objective and rigorous approach that focuses support on those with the greatest needs and extra costs” and the need to make the system “fairer and harder to exploit.” He told the CSJ how the number of people claiming PIP due to depression or anxiety, had doubled since 2019, suggesting that the system was “undermined by the way people are asked to make subjective and unverifiable claims about their capability.”

The speech was labelled “chilling, threatening, and stigmatising.”

“The PM’s wording today just continues a trend that is stigmatising, harmful, and inaccurate. The problem is not disabled people on benefits, it is not the fault of those left disabled by the government’s appalling handling of Covid, it is not the fault of those broken by mental illness because of failed economic policy and the cost-of-living crisis, the problem is the system itself and its long-term prejudices, a system able to blame anyone but itself,” said Disability Rights UK.

The right-wing media meanwhile did not hold back in the monstering of ‘jobless’ benefit claimants.

‘Benefits Busts: New benefits fraud squads will arrest and fine even more welfare cheats, Rishi reveals in crackdown plan,’ splashed the Sun following the PM’s speech.

The Telegraph, accused previously of ‘legitimising’ hate speech towards disabled benefit claimants through discriminatory articles, went a step further, laying into the DWP.

‘Britain stuck with a record £30bn benefits bill, DWP’s own forecasts show,’ it headlined, in an article about payments to people who don’t have a job continuing to rise “despite stricter tests” and “Rishi Sunak’s welfare overhaul.”

While benefit fraud in Britain is a serious and costly issue, the vilification of claimants within political and media circles, conveniently ignores the different bodies of research that suggest claims of disability benefit fraud is exaggerated. Issues impacting the health and welfare of families with disability are also routinely overlooked or understated.

For example, nowhere in Sunak’s speech nor the lurid reports about it, cite figures released by the DWP earlier this year, which showed nearly half of all individuals in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult in Britain were living in poverty by 2021-22. The figures were consistent with projections by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2018, which warned that families with disabled children and where there are both disabled adults and children, would be worst hit by tax and welfare reform changes up until 21-22.

Ellen Clifford of Disabled People Against Cuts and author of The War on Disabled People, described the findings as “shocking” and a “terrible indictment of a country as rich as Britain, where, over the same two years that the new measures show very sharp increases in disability poverty, the number of billionaires in the UK rose by 20 percent.”

Disability benefit fraud a ‘non-issue’

Meanwhile, separate and more recent DWP figures show that there were almost no recorded losses to the taxpayer due to fraud in the disability benefits system in the financial year ending 2024.

Disability Living Allowance fraud was just 0.1 percent, rounded down to £0m. PIP cheating was found to be 0 percent in the same period, the data showed.

PIP overpayments represented 0.4 percent, equating to around £90m lost in a year, marking a significant decrease from the previous year, when such overpayments stood 1.1 percent (£200m). The overpayments were said to be mainly due to errors made by the department when allocating award levels at the assessment stage.

Responding to the figures, Mikey Erhardt, campaigner at Disability Rights UK described PIP fraud as a ‘non-issue.’

“New data shows what we, as disabled people, have known for years – PIP fraud is a non-issue. PIP fraud is now the lowest on record – despite the government placing fraud front and centre of their latest public announcements,” he said.

Erhardt added: “If the government is concerned about fraud, it would be serious about the £15.2bn that multinational companies hide from the UK via tax havens. Money which could fund public services that we all need and use. Instead, disabled people continue to be demonised.”

The total amount of unclaimed benefits is also routinely missing from the benefit ‘fraud’ clamour. Research by Policy in Practice found that 8.4m people could be missing out on an average of £2,700 per year in rights-based benefits.

‘The failure to deliver support to people who are entitled to it directly affects education, health outcomes and social participation for millions of people,” said Deven Ghelani, Policy in Practice director.

Sunak’s wealth

Amid the panic about ‘welfare cheats,’ and adding to the insult, were the reports this week involving the Prime Minister’s personal wealth. As millions of people struggle to make ends meet and rely on welfare payments just to survive, the Prime Minister and his wife have seen their wealth increase from a net worth of £529m in 2023 to £651m. The increase of £120 million in the couple’s fortunes is linked to Murty’s shareholding in Infosys, an IT company co-founded by her father and based in Bangalore, India, which has seen a sharp increase in its share value.

Sunak faced criticism after a summary of his tax affairs showed he paid an effective tax rate of 23 percent on a £2.2m income in 2023, after making a £1.8m profit on his holding in a US investment fund. The rate was much lower than the top rate of 45 percent because some income was taxed at source in the US and the rate of capital gains tax is lower at 20 percent.

Robert Palmer, the executive director at Tax Justice UK, referred to the tax system as “broken.” “People will be shocked to learn the prime minister has such a low tax rate despite bringing in millions. But this is a feature of our broken tax system,” said Palmer.

His ties to the US have been a delicate issue for the Prime Minister. He was criticised in April 2022 after it was revealed he held a US green card, meaning he declared himself as a permanent US resident for tax purposes, whilst he was chancellor and for six years as an MP. His wife Murty was also criticised after her non-dom status was revealed.

Labour has long called to abolish the special non-domiciled (non-dom) rule that allows people to live in the UK but have their home overseas for tax reasons, and not pay any UK tax on money they make elsewhere. Labour says they would spend the money saved on the NHS and schools.

In this year’s Spring Budget, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the government would abolish non-dom tax breaks, telling MPs there would be “transitional arrangements” for those benefiting from the current tax arrangements.

In a swipe at the prime minister’s wife, Keir Starmer asked why it had taken the Conservatives so long to “stand up to their friends, their funders and their families.”

Tax Havens

In recent years, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has faced scrutiny over offshore tax avoidance and evasion. Figures disclosed to the independent think-tank Tax Policy Associates by HMRC in September 2021 showed that UK taxpayers held nearly £570bn in tax havens, including offshore funds.

As millions living a bare existence on benefits get vilified as ‘fraudsters’ and ‘cheats,’ the number of investigations being carried out by (HMRC) fraud team looking into offshore, corporate, and wealthy taxpayers has fallen by more than half in five years.

Figures obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism released in February, show that civil investigations opened by the offshore, corporate, and wealthy unit fell from 1,417 in 2018-19 to 627 in 2022-23.

“Even when [HMRC is] opening civil cases, they appear to be going after the easier, lower-value targets,” said Fiona Fernie, a partner at tax adviser Blick Rothenberg.

Just weeks after Rishi Sunak’s ‘full-on assault on disabled people’, as James Taylor, director of strategy at the disability equality charity Scope, described the speech, Unite published a report into profiteering by UK corporations.

Analysing the profit margins of 17,000 companies, it found that corporate profit margins have increased by a massive 30 percent since 2018/19. Gas and electricity companies were found to be the worst culprits, with an increased profit margin of 363 percent.

As corporations make obscene profits, household budgets continue to be squeezed, and those of benefits, many of which can’t afford the essentials like food and heating, get labelled ‘scroungers.’

No doubt, with the general election now just weeks away, the most vulnerable in society will face more vitriol as the government seeks more cheap electioneering headlines to divert attention from their own mishandling of the economy, welfare policy, immigration, to name a few.

Right-Wing Media Watch – Tory newspapers back Sunak, with some utterly absurd claims

It had to be one of the least auspicious starts to a general election ever. A beleaguered Prime Minister trailing the opposition by 20 points in the polls, announcing a summer election while drowned out, not only by the pouring rain, but by the lyrics of Things Can Only Get Better, the anthem of Tony Blair’s victorious 1997 campaign.

But as the memes flooded social media, and images of a bedraggled Prime Minister stood outside No 10. dominated the front pages the next day, the Conservative press stayed as loyal to the PM as they could, making some pretty desperate claims.

Backing Sunak all the way, the Daily Express claimed that Britain has “bounced back” under his leadership, while Keir Starmer “desires power for its own sake.” Its lead story headlined ‘PM: I Am Fighting For Our Nation’s Future,” read: “Just as he made the right decisions as Chancellor during the pandemic, Mr Sunak has held his nerve as Prime Minister, ended disarray at Westminster and led us out of an economic crisis.

“Today, he is still the right person to safeguard Britain’s recovery and ensure we grasp the enormous opportunities available to us,” the editorial continued.

In a separate article, the newspaper attempted to frame Steve Bray, the well-known anti-Brexit activist responsible for music that accompanied Sunak’s speech, as the one who was humiliated.

“Brexit hater humiliated as speakers blow while he sabotages Rishi Sunak’s election speech,” it splashed. Others of course, saw it differently, with Bray labelled a ‘genius’ for his latest antics.

Several newspapers focused on Sunak’s gamble of calling an election when the Tories are lagging Labour so definitively in the polls, when he could have waited until the autumn.

The Times took such a view, arguing that the announcement was “perhaps the last possible moment for this government to head to the country on something like the front foot.”

The Telegraph took a similar line declaring Sunak saw “a window of opportunity.” Taking aim at the opposition, its editorial stated that “a Labour government might well bring change, but it will not be of the good kind.”

“Labour would tax more, regulate more, be weaker in defence of the national interest and be far more relaxed about mass migration and the excesses of green ideologues.”

The Daily Mail also focused on the timing, claiming Sunak has “seized the initiative,” and calling the decision “nothing if not bold.”

Murdoch’s Sun meanwhile expressed its frustration over the election coinciding with the Euros, Taylor Swift, and Wimbledon. ‘Oh ballots’ was the headline of the report which admitted the PM had leapt on news of tumbling inflation to “take a massive gamble.” The story also cited Michael Gove, who reportedly led the Cabinet in support of the early date, saying: “Who dares wins… and you have dared, Prime Minister, and will win.”

Optimistic talk from the levelling up secretary, who just days later announced he will not be standing for re-election as an MP ahead of the general election.

Smear of the Week: Right’s witch-hunt against Civil Service drags on

Lazy, unproductive, working from home, too generous pensions, the ‘blob.’ The poor Civil Service has been forced to endure some unpleasant insults in recent years, as successive Conservative governments have seemingly blamed them for their own failings.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, was accused of chasing ‘cheap headlines,’ with his push for civil servants to return to the office, having previously supported hybrid working to minimise the need for office space.

The latest smear campaign against the half-a-million-plus apparently work-shy grifters involved their choice of lanyards.

Rishi Sunak’s minister for ‘common sense’, Esther McVey, earned herself some headlines, announcing in a speech at, you guessed it, the Centre for Policy Studies, a package of changes to the way equality, diversity, and inclusion are handled in government. She stated that EDI roles equate to around 400 full-time positions, which is actually just 0.1 percent of civil servants.

She took particular aim at ‘non-standard’ lanyards worn by staff, arguing they “shouldn’t be a “random pick and mix” and that government employees should leave their personal political views “at the building entrance.” Making them wear a “standard” lanyard design was a “visible” way of showing that, McVey suggested.

At last week’s PMQs, Keir Starmer seized on the Tory minister’s comments to ridicule Sunak, mocking the minister for common sense’s “vital crackdown on the gravest of threats.”

But despite the ridicule of the Tories’ latest lame culture war assault, the right-wing press has been keen to keep it alive

.

In his column in the Daily Mail, Daniel Hannan, or Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, who was a Conservative MEP from 1999 to 2020, and is now President of the Institute for Free Trade (yet another Eurosceptic think-tank that advocates “the moral case for open commerce”) attempted to equate civil servants’ choice of lanyards as proof of “obsessive wokery” that “makes them worse at their jobs.”

Recycling the same well-worn argument, on May 18, the Express spoke of a ‘woke crackdown’ beginning as ‘hundreds of ‘diversity’ civil service jobs to be axed.’ The report excitedly informed of staff being promised protection from bullying if they refuse to “sign up to woke ideas, for example by failing to include their pronouns on email signatures.”

No doubt there are elderly Tories and newspaper editors with long memories who, in the event of a Labour victory on July 4, will be dusting down headlines from the Thatcherite ‘80s berating ‘loony left’ councils for their support for progressive policies. This time it will be Whitehall civil servants in the firing line. In the strange world of right-wing culture wars, the old tunes are always the best.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

UK

Union says workers at Morrisons are being ‘fleeced’ by pension changes

“These unmerited changes to workers’ pensions will leave our members worse off every month."

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

 Yesterday

LEFT FOOT FORWARD

Following strikes at Asda and Amazon stores in recent months over pay and conditions, almost 1,000 staff at Morrisons warehouses in Cheshire and West Yorkshire are on a 72-hour strike over a row about a cut in company pensions.

At the start of this financial year, Morrisons moved to a new policy where it and its employees both paid 4 percent into the pension pot, instead of the previous 5 percent and 3 percent split.

Canteen staff, administrators, stock controllers, and cooks, who earn between £12 and £13 an hour, say that the supermarket’s plan to reduce how much they contribute to employees’ pensions will see them lose an average of £500 a year.

In January, Morrisons reported a jump in profits, as it delivered its sixth consecutive quarter of like-for-like improvement.

The trade union Unite, which represents Morrisons staff, says the supermarket has “refused to negotiate” over changes to the pensions and other perks of its members.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, accused the supermarket of “planning to fleece workers.

“These unmerited changes to workers’ pensions will leave our members worse off every month. Unite will not stand for such behaviour from any employer, let alone one like Morrisons who is raking in massive profits during a cost of living crisis,” said Graham

The supermarket said it would ultimately pay more into the pensions of workers due to the government’s planned changes to pension auto-enrolment rules. They also said that the dip in pension contributions would be more than offset by the offered pay rise of 9 percent.

Currently, staff who earn less than £10,000 a year are not automatically enrolled on a pension scheme and companies do not have to pay contributions on earnings below £6,240. The government has however said these limits will be ended, and all workers may have to be enrolled. But a timeframe for the new rules has not been set and the outcome of a consultation will not be reported until the autumn, which will then be considered by the new government.

The strike action at the Morrisons warehouses began at 5am on May 23 and will run until 5am on May 26.

Morrissons says they have made a number of new proposals to Unite, including a 9 percent pay award, a new service award scheme, and improvements to the planned future pension scheme changes.

“Disappointingly, Unite has chosen to reject these new proposals without putting them to its members, and instead are continuing with strike action at two out of our seven logistics sites, initially over three days,” said a company spokesperson.

Image credit: Creative Commons – Brad 28

Ecosocialism to change everything – the Sixth International Ecosocialist Conference

FRIDAY 24 MAY 2024, BY GERMÁN BERNASCONI

The Sixth International Ecosocialist Conference was held on 10-11 May 2024. This was the first time outside Europe, a decade on from the first meeting in Geneva (Switzerland) in 2014. The project began more than a year ago, when ATTAC and the Argentine socialist movement Poder Popular were contacted to explore the possibility of organizing it. After months of debate, the context of harsh Argentine realities, together with the electoral situation, led us to suspend the holding of the event in 2023, but the work and setting of political goals continued.

Successive meetings of the group promoting the Conference, includin organizations from Brazil, Chile, the Basque Country, Portugal and Switzerland, were augmented with a series of international meetings, where the Marabunta organization joined the local Argentine group. After the elections and with the victory of Javier Milei, it was decided to continue holding the Conference in the month of May. This was ratified immediately after the victory of the libertarian candidate, in view of his program of structural adjustment of capitalism against the working class, since international solidarity is key to defeating the plans of this figure.

SOME OBJECTIVES OF THE MEETING

The environmental movement in Argentina is broad, diverse and with many activists. The anti-extractivist struggles, as well as those against the expansion of genetically modified crops and against the use of agro toxins, make it one of the most dynamic sectors with a great appeal among youth. However, the ecosocialist perspective is not a voice of great relevance. This diagnosis positioned the Conference as a platform to bring together all the activism that draws on this perspective. On the other hand, the dynamics of the Meeting meant that it takes place only every two years.

The challenge was to give it some political and activist continuity, which consolidated debates and could advance to greater levels of agreement and programmatic and strategic developments at the level of the challenge posed by the climate crisis, the responsibility of the capitalist productive regime. Likewise, its being held in the South posed the challenge of touching on topics that are not common in other latitudes, such as extractivist debates, as well as green colonialism or the problems surrounding environmental racism and the struggles of indigenous peoples.

Finally, the holding of COP 30 in Belem in 2025 imposed a new debate around this conference, the usefulness of participating, the strategy of denunciation and ignorance or participation in the counter-summit that is already taking place.
.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONFERENCE

After almost a year of work, on 10-11 May, more than 200 people met at the Central Auditorium of ATE (State Workers Association) and the two auditoriums of the Quagliaro Hotel, also owned by the aforementioned union. On 9 May, Conference activities were planned, but they were suspended due to the necessary general strike called that day by all the country’s trade union federations responding to the strong adjustment imposed by the government of Javier Milei. Over both days, various topics on the ecosocialist agenda were covered, starting with the history of the Conferences themselves, knowing that every struggle must have its memory, so as not to have to start from scratch again.

The problems of Eco-Marxism, the plundering of territories, debt and trade in an eco-socialist key, the rise of militarism and the extreme right and repression were some of the topics of the first day, which closed with a panel that represented the big environmental struggles that have occurred in Argentina in recent decades.

Saturday the 11th began with an intervention by Michael Lowy in the ecosocialist debate between the centre and the periphery, followed by an in-depth debate on what to do in the face of COP 30, a space that inaugurated the First Latin American and Caribbean Ecosocial Conference. Food sovereignty, ecofeminism and the debate on energy and class in capitalism animated an afternoon where each topic was explored in depth. The final panel discussed the current situation of the ecosocialist movement and its future prospects, with one of the leaders of the global ecosocialist movement, Daniel Tanuro participating by video.

The Conference crowned its realization with the promise of a triple continuity: participation in the counter-summit in Belem, holding the Second Latin American and Caribbean Ecosocial (ist) Conference there; the seventh International Ecosocialist Conference in Belgium organized by Gauche Anticapitaliste; and the continuity of the programmatic, strategic debate in an international network that will hold its first meeting in the next few weeks.

SOME CONCLUSIONS

I consider that the Sixth Conference was a success. With the participation of more than 40 organizations and more than 15 countries, as well as a large part of the Argentine provinces, the ecosocialist movement has a milestone from which to intervene in a better way in the environmental movement. The ecosocialist challenge now lies in giving continuity to the organization of its own permanent instances of reflection and construction, as well as intervening in a unitary way in the fight against the extreme right-wing deniers of the climate crisis while always being careful not to fall into the false solutions of green capitalism.

Today we are closer to a systemic ecosocialist alternative that allows the working class to enjoy a healthy environment, fewer hours of work and more time for collective enjoyment. It is time to go on the offensive and articulate a systemic program against the climatic and social barbarity of capitalism.

20 May 2024

P.S.

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ATTACHED DOCUMENTS

• ecosocialism-to-change-everything-the-sixth-international_a8533.pdf (PDF - 908.2 KIB)
  Extraction PDF [->article8533]

Ecosocialism

• Marx, Communism and Degrowth
• Saito, Marx and the Anthropocene
• ‘Optimism of the Will’: Ecosocialist Dreamin’
• The politics of degrowth - Technology, ideology, and the fight for eco-socialism
• Drought, heat wave and revolution

• Germán Bernasconi

  Germán Bernasconi is a member of Poder Popular in Argentina.

It Really, Really Looks Like Saudi Arabia Did 9/11

It’s becoming impossible to deny Saudi government complicity in 9/11. So why does Joe Biden want to sign a security pact with the kingdom that would obligate Americans to fight and die on its behalf?

 Branko Marcetic

May 25, 2024

Source: Jacobin


US vice president Dick Cheney meets with Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud at the Naval Observatory, February 11, 2002. (Presidential Materials Division / Wikimedia Commons)

It’s never a bad time to reflect on the copious evidence for the Saudi government’s role in facilitating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, it’s arguably more important than ever right now, with the Biden administration seemingly dead set on signing a mutual defense pact with that same government — a pact that would legally oblige the United States to get dragged into another Middle Eastern war by fighting alongside Saudi Arabia if and when it comes under attack. As this terrible idea limps closer to reality, even more evidence for Saudi government complicity in the attacks has come to light.

First reported by the Florida Bulldog, the latest revelations come from a May court filing that has come out of the ongoing lawsuit that 9/11 victims’ families launched against the Saudi government, challenging the kingdom’s attempt to have the suit dismissed. Littered through the filing are copious references to never-before-seen evidence collected by the families’ lawyers in the process of discovery and included in the material declassified by President Joe Biden in September 2021, which they argue shows without a shadow of a doubt that the Saudi government played an integral and deliberate role in helping the 9/11 hijackers kill nearly three thousand Americans.

Reading the filing, it’s hard to disagree.

One piece of evidence mentioned is a video found by authorities in the apartment of Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi after they raided it shortly after the attacks. Al-Bayoumi was not simply an asset of the General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Saudi Arabia’s principal spy agency, as damning as that is alone. According to a 2017 FBI report declassified two years ago, he was also paid his monthly GIP stipend through, and reported his intelligence gathering to, the then Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, a well-connected, long-serving official who was friends with, among others, the Bush family.

According to the filing, the tape, which the police produced “just days” before the document was filed, shows al-Bayoumi driving around Washington, DC — with two Saudi embassy officials who the FBI determined had a “nexus to al-Qa’ida” — in which “he surveys the US Capitol at length,” noting its “structural features, entrances, and security posts,” and “mak[ing] remarks throughout reflecting hostility to the West and Congress, including the senators who ‘make all the decisions.’” As the filing states, the US Capitol was among the targets the hijackers had discussed hitting, and may well have been the intended target of Flight 93 before a passenger uprising made it crash in Pennsylvania.

Another piece of evidence gathered from al-Bayoumi’s apartment: a drawing of a plane alongside an equation and calculations that were meant “to discern the distance at which a target on the ground will be visible from a certain altitude,” as determined by an aviation expert.

The 9/11 hijackers would have needed to know “from what distances and altitudes they would be able to see their targets,” and this information gave them “the visual cues needed to fly the hijacked jetliners into their targets,” the filing quotes the expert as saying. Meanwhile, the filing states, the equation on the drawing had nothing to do with what al-Bayoumi later claimed after the fact in a later deposition: that the drawing was merely about measuring the distance between different cities.

In its 2017 report, the FBI concluded that “there is a 50/50 chance [al-Bayoumi] had advanced knowledge the 9/11 attacks were to occur.” But these two pieces of evidence alone make that one of this century’s great understatements. If al-Bayoumi had possible foreknowledge about the 9/11 attacks, it’s because he was clearly intimately involved in planning them.

Meanwhile, phone records cited in the filing show back-and-forth calls between al-Bayoumi and the Saudi embassy, consulate, and various of its officials at key points: before the arrival of two of the hijackers in Los Angeles, “between and prior to and directly following key events of logistic assistance provided” to the hijackers, and before and after the party al-Bayoumi held for the hijackers connecting them to a local support network.

Other phone records show al-Bayoumi and Saudi consular official Fahad al-Thumairy calling Ismail Mana, another official with the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs (MOIA, which has long been accused of being a vehicle for the spread of extremism), shortly before he met with the hijackers. He placed calls for the purpose of finding the hijackers an apartment before they arrived. In fact, al-Bayoumi had visited the rental office of his own apartment complex at least five times before their arrival, asking if there was an apartment available in “close proximity” to his, according to evidence gathered via discovery. All this, even though al-Bayoumi would later claim he met the two hijackers on the day they arrived entirely by chance.

The filing also sheds more light on Mana himself, previously a figure mentioned in the sworn deposition of a former FBI counterterrorism agent. One member of the King Fahad Mosque that Mana helped oversee as part of his MOIA work — a mosque, incidentally, that Saudi Arabia had funded and that the FBI had concluded had been the site of “extremist-related activity both before and after September 11” — testified that he “had a fierce hatred of non-Muslims and held anti-American beliefs.” Evidence shows that al-Bayoumi and al-Thumairy knew and worked with Mana, the filing states, including al-Bayoumi’s phone book, which listed Mana under the Saudi Consulate with the identifier “Islamic affairs.” Al-Bayoumi met with the other two at the mosque shortly after meeting the hijackers, according to witness testimony.

These are just some of the most eye-popping revelations contained in the filing that builds on previous disclosures, all making it more and more undeniable that the 9/11 attacks couldn’t have happened without the direct, deliberate efforts of the Saudi government and its officials. In short, they establish that a Saudi intelligence asset paid by the Saudi ambassador and with numerous official Saudi official contacts not only helped get two of the future 9/11 hijackers set up in the United States, but was apparently closely involved in the actual planning of the attacks — to the point of casing out one of their potential targets.

The big question right now is, why on Earth would Americans ever bind themselves to fight and die on behalf of a government that did this, as the Biden administration wants?

The answer is they wouldn’t — not unless they are forced to, against their informed consent. First, by a president desperate to claim that the disaster he’s created in the Middle East has somehow all been worth it; and above all, by a political class that treats the wishes of a faraway foreign government as more important than the struggles of its own people.



Branko Marcetic is a staff writer at Jacobin magazine and a 2019-2020 Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting fellow. He is the author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.

MIT’s Orwellian Language Masks Its Stance On Gaza Protests

By Michel DeGraff

May 25, 2024

Source: Le Monde Diplomatique


MIT lecture hall (Photo: Ryan Tyler-Smith)

I write this essay while thinking of my dear friend and colleague Noam Chomsky who deeply understands the importance of truth, courage, language and linguistics for decolonisation, liberation, peace and community-building in Israel and Palestine to Haiti.

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the fictional language Newspeak is designed to control human minds and hide reality — for example, claiming that ‘war is peace’ and ‘ignorance is strength’ or, in the case of my native Haiti, calling a violent invasion a ‘peacekeeping mission’— so that the ruling classes of the world, aka ‘Big Brother’, can strengthen the power of their totalitarian regimes. In recent months, this dystopian use of language as a political weapon for a variety of nefast objectives (gaslighting, dehumanisation and manufacturing consent) has intensified in the context of the war on Gaza and associated protests and counter-protests, police crackdowns on student encampments against genocide. Most surprisingly, doublespeak has permeated even curriculum-related disputes with my own departmental colleagues at MIT about what’s ‘fit’ to teach as linguistics and what my expertise (or alleged lack thereof) should allow me to teach as such. Is ignorance really strength, even at MIT, even among linguists? If linguistics were taken as an indispensable tool for unveiling Newspeak’s semantic distortions and for advocating for liberation and community-building, it might help usher a better world.

Under the banner of Scientists Against Genocide Encampment (SAGE), MIT students are courageously standing for justice and peace for Palestinians. With their chants of ‘intifada’ (meaning ‘shaking off, uprising, resistance’ in Arabic) and of freedom for Palestinians ‘from the river to the sea’ (a phrase also used in Likud’s original charter, before Hamas, for Zionist expansion), they demand that MIT cut ties with Israel’s ministry of defence in the context of collaboration that represents only 0.03% of MIT’s 2023 allocated sponsorship. In their protests, the SAGE students have highlighted two projects that directly contribute to Israel’s war against Palestinians: one for autonomous robotic swarms of killer drones, the other for biosensors for remote detection.

Some in the MIT community, like post-doctoral student Lior Alon, claim that the SAGE’s students’ pleas to halt the genocide of Palestinians are ‘pro-Hamas’ and advocate the killing of Jews. That’s false. And Alon contradicted himself by mocking his own ‘fear’ after scaling the gates of the encampment and standing on top of a chair among SAGE students minding their business and ignoring him. He sarcastically shouted: ‘Retsef, I feel unsafe. Can you come and help me? Retsef, I am all alone here, and I need help from some other Jewish person.’ Alon, like many other Zionist counter-protesters, participate in well-rehearsed propaganda that erases the anti-Zionist Jewish students and misrepresents them, along with their non-Jewish comrades, as violent and antisemitic. Here it must be stressed that the anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian protesters are not anti-Israel, though they are anti-Zionist to the extent that they want the peaceful co-existence of an Israel-Palestine where both Jews and Palestinians can safely live with fully uninhibited sovereignty, human rights, land rights, justice and dignity as equals.

Yet MIT president Sally Kornbluth, too, is guilty of participating in this narrative as she helps spread the racist trope that Palestinian students and their allies pose a potential threat to the MIT community. In a recent video, she criticises ‘chants [that] are heard by members of our community as calling for the elimination of the state of Israel’. SAGE students are now paying a heavy toll for her duplicity, when so-called ‘interim suspensions’ and other unprecedented penalties levied by MIT’s administration carry permanent consequences for students’ lives and careers, including delay in graduation and loss of employment, loss of post-graduate opportunities etc. Worse yet, these suspensions were decided without any due process. To date, four of them have had to be rescinded due to missing or false evidence in these students’ cases. Yet the administration still defends these measures, even comparing them to the preemptive measures that are needed to protect potential victims of sexual predators. The layers of doublespeak and racism are thick.

MIT professor Retsef Levi, a member of MIT Israel Alliance (MITIA), has added fuel to the fire of these Orwellian allegations about SAGE students’ violence when he mistranslated the Arabic slogans ‘Death to the Zionist project’ as ‘Death to the Zionists’, and ‘Israel is thief’ as ‘Israel destroyed’. These mistranslations are tendentious, as confirmed by colleagues who speak and study Arabic. It’s as if Martin Luther King had called, not for an end to racism, but for death to racists. Such slander endangers SAGE students, especially when mistranslated videos go viral in Zionist anti-Palestinian circles. These distortions come from the same professor who, on 8 May at SAGE, decided unilaterally that his senior MIT faculty colleague (myself) cannot be considered ‘faculty’. During MITIA’s Yom Ha’atzmaut party on 7 May, an event sanctioned by MIT, Zionist Jews were dancing near SAGE to the beat of חרבו דרבו, ‘Harbu Darbu’, a song calling Palestinians ‘whores’, ‘fucking mice coming out of tunnels’ and ‘children of Amalek’, which encourages the Israel army to make a ‘complete mess on [their] head[s]’. Yet it’s the SAGE students who are accused of posing an existential antisemitic threat to the community and to Israel, and who are met with suspensions and evictions.

The antisemitism charge is false. In the Boston Globe, the MIT Israel Alliance characterised SAGE as ‘anti-Jewish’, ‘anti-Israel’, and fear-inducing for Jewish students. There, too, there’s no mention that SAGE includes, among many Jewish students, members of MIT Jews for Ceasefire (MITJ4C) who organised a Passover Seder at the encampment to which MITIA was invited. MITJ4C students, too, have been forceful in their critiques of Israel’s government.

Truth, though, must not get in the way of Orwellian language. Observing a counter-protest on 3 May 2024 at MIT, co-sponsored by Israel’s consulate in Boston, one would think Palestinians didn’t even exist. The ‘Never Again Is Now’ rally focused solely on the evils of the Holocaust, the atrocities on 7 October and antisemitism — not one word about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the preceding violence against Palestinians since the Nakba.

In her work, Israeli professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan, formerly at Hebrew University, has described a ‘semiotics of othering’ used in Israeli schools to foster indifference toward the suffering of Palestinians and toward the genocidal discourse of Israeli leaders and their allies. In this context, Palestinians are equated with Nazis; now the SAGE and other anti-genocide students are subjected to the same slander — and to ‘Hamasification’. In a related Orwellian twist, an MIT Israel Alliance student called Israel a ‘successful anti-colonial movement’, ignoring the fact that Theodore Herzl, at the end of the 19th century, founded Zionism as an explicitly colonial project. ‘Ignorance is strength’, indeed.

Kornbluth described the Israeli counter-protest as being ‘in support of our Israeli and Jewish students’ (note the pronoun!), again erasing anti-Zionist Jewish students who support justice for Palestinians on a par with Jews. This instance of Newspeak also fails to acknowledge the unusually direct interference of a foreign government in MIT’s affairs, with the Israeli consulate in Boston co-sponsoring a Zionist counter-protest on MIT’s main front steps. This is from the same government whose prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, compared encampment students with Nazi students in German universities in the 1930s. Meanwhile, the pro-Palestinian liberation chants that Jews for Ceasefire students sing keep challenging the false binary of pro-Palestine versus pro-Israel in MIT administration’s discourse about students’ protests — a binary that leads to unfair equations that conflate pro-Palestine with anti-Israel, pro-Hamas and even neo-Nazis. This is yet another manifestation of anti-Palestinian racism that’s veiled by doublespeak.

But there’s more Orwellian Newspeak from Kornbluth. She calls MIT’s collaboration with Israel ‘vibrant’ even though it violates MIT’s own ‘red lights’ principle for halting projects that violate human rights. These ‘red lights’ are based on the same ‘core values’ that led MIT to put a stop to individual MIT faculty accepting gifts from convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein; those faculty who engaged with Epstein were asked by MIT administration to publicly apologise or resign. MIT also stopped collaboration with Russia immediately after the start of the war on Ukraine. Where are the ‘red lights’ to stop MIT complicity in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians by Israel’s military? In yet another Orwellian twist, Kornbluth appeals to ‘academic freedom’ in order to trump human rights and license MIT’s complicity with genocide.

The personal is political, and nowhere is this more evident than in our academic institutions. On 1 April 2024, I was startled to learn, in a police report, that the MIT Israel Alliance (MITIA), an organisation claiming to be the victim of fear caused by allegedly antisemitic student activists, had, in fact, called for the physical surveillance of those protesting against the war on Gaza. In a disturbing twist of Newspeak, a student who was caught photographing me told MIT Police that the individuals targeted by MITIA were ‘disruptive’ and ‘confrontational’. Yet, the only instances when I felt unsafe at anti-genocide rallies at MIT were when Zionist counter-protesters physically or verbally assaulted the protesters. And on that April day, it was this student’s very actions, surreptitiously photographing me and then fleeing, that disrupted my peace of mind and prompted me to report the incident to MIT Police.

This incident is part of a larger pattern of surveillance and repression. The differential treatment by the MIT administration, hesitating to address such affronts while swiftly suspending and evicting pro-Palestinian student groups, is deeply concerning — especially when the reason given is the need to protect community members who feel ‘unsafe’.

As a Haitian-born linguist, I’ve dedicated my career to using language and linguistics as a tool for decolonisation and liberation. My Fall 2024 seminar, like many of my previous courses such as ‘Black Matters’, ‘Creole languages and Caribbean identities’ and ‘Linguistics & Social Justice: Language, Education & Human Rights’, is an embodiment of MIT’s now familiar, if somewhat hypocritical, slogans — for a #BetterWorld with #MindHandHeart. This seminar, for which I’ve already received MIT MindHandHeart funding for inviting experts in fields adjacent to mine, will explore linguistic dimensions of truth-seeking and nation-building from Haiti to Palestine — from Creole exceptionalism to the Palestine exception. However, my proposal for this seminar has met with resistance from my colleagues at MIT Linguistics — based on ‘concerns’ about whether it would ‘fit our curriculum’ and whether I have the necessary expertise to plan this seminar — though I’ve already invited authors of books who can help us navigate new contents in their respective fields of expertise when needed. My colleagues have even appealed to a clause in MIT’s ‘Report on Free Expression’ that limits ‘academic freedom’ in case a faculty member wanted to teach outside their expertise — for example, ‘Beginning Chinese’ in an advanced calculus class. Yet the very objective of research seminars at MIT Linguistics is to expand knowledge about language by applying already acquired insights to new empirical domains — in the case of my seminar, from Creole exceptionalism in Haiti to Palestine exceptions and Orwellian Newspeak in discourse about the war on Gaza. My MIT Linguistics colleagues have initiated an unprecedented review process for this course proposal, contrasting starkly with the swift approval of previous courses on a variety topics, taught by junior, senior and even visiting professors.

The ongoing scrutiny of my seminar feels less like an issue about ‘curriculum fit’ and ‘expertise’, and more like an attempt to silence analyses that might be perceived as a threat to the status quo. This suspicion is heightened when I recall that even the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), whose mission is ‘the advancement of [linguistic] knowledge and the betterment of society’, rejected my proposal of a statement about linguistic distortions regarding the war on Gaza.

The challenges at hand are not just about Orwellian misrepresentations of Gaza protests and counterprotests at MIT or the censorship one professor’s graduate seminar. These strategies of repression illustrate a critical battle around truth, freedom of speech, academic freedom and even democracy itself, amid political pressures that seek to mold academia, not into a crucible of critical, diverse and ethical thought, but into an echo chamber in service of hegemony. As for the linguistic battlefield, we’ve now glimpsed how the use, interpretation and translation of language are powerful weapons in creating fog around the war on Gaza. The light of truth, though, emerges when language is carefully analysed and its manipulation is exposed. By demystifying Orwellian language, Newspeak and doublespeak as weapons for gaslighting and dehumanisation, we can move closer to a world in which peace and freedom prevail for all — from Gaza to MIT to Haiti.

Michel DeGraff is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a founding member of the Haitian Creole Academy.